Looking after VIPs without running a second event
A guest of honour arriving to a queue is the kind of thing that gets remembered. You can give VIPs a smooth arrival without building a whole separate operation to do it.
By FrontHAUS Team · Editorial
Part of the Event data & follow-up guide →
There's a particular flavour of dread that comes with a guest of honour. A minister, a CEO, the sponsor whose name is on the banner. Whatever goes slightly wrong at an event, you'd really rather it didn't go wrong in front of them, and the most exposed moment is the one right at the start, when they walk through the door.
The usual answer is to build a separate setup. A different desk, a printed list a staff member guards, a runner with a walkie-talkie, sometimes a whole parallel process that only one person on the team understands. It works, mostly, until that one person is in the loo when the car pulls up.
It doesn't need to be its own machine. The smoother way is to handle VIPs inside the same arrangement everyone else goes through, just with a few things known in advance.
The arrival is the bit that matters
When a VIP arrives, the people meeting them should already know they're coming. Their name flagged, their host alerted, any little detail attached to it. Halal meal, mobility needs, the fact that they prefer to be greeted by their title, the photographer who's meant to be there for the handshake. None of that should be a scramble in the moment. It should just be there, quietly, so the person at the door can say the right name and walk them straight in.
A lot of the time the best VIP experience is the one that looks like no experience at all. They don't queue, they aren't asked to spell their name, nobody fumbles for a badge that hasn't been printed. They're recognised, welcomed and moving before they've had a chance to wonder whether this event has its act together.
Because it all sits on the same guest list as everyone else, you also avoid the classic mess of two lists that disagree. The VIP who was a late addition still shows up properly. The one who cancelled doesn't get announced to an empty doorway. And if a guest of honour turns up who somehow wasn't on anyone's radar, your team can welcome them as if they were expected all along, then sort the admin out later.
That last part is what your most important guests actually notice. Not the lanyard, not the welcome pack. The feeling that they were expected, and that someone had thought about them before they arrived.